Legal Question in Constitutional Law in California

Re: Constitutional law

In order to trigger the requirement to give a Miranda warning, which includes some of your 5th Amendment rights (the right to remain silent) and 6th Amendment rights (the right to speak with an attorney and to have an attorney present during questioning), the 1) interrogation has to be 2) custodial (you are not free to leave) and 3) conducted by a police officer or other enforcement officer employed by the government.

You can stop an interrogation at any time by asking for a lawyer (invoking your 6th Amendment rights).

The officer does not have to read you a Miranda warning if he is not going to interrogate you or use your statement (e.g. you are being arrested for DUI based on your having flunked the Breathalyzer and field sobriety tests, and the officer therefore has less reason to care about obtaining a confession or other incriminating statement).

Re: Constitutional law

In a nutshell, anytime a police officer takes a person into custody for interrogation purposes, the miranda warnings must be properly administered (the 5th amendment). The difficult part is determining what is legally deemed a custodial interrogation unfortunately. it all depends on the facts and if the person was restricted by the officer in his/her "freedom of movement or leaving the scene" at the time of the questioning.

Re: Constitutional law

I can't quite agree with Mr. Stone and Mr. Torrey. There is never a time when an offiver "must" give a defendant the Miranda warnings, at least in the sense that she would violate any law by failing to do so. Such a failure to warn is percectly legal, though it may undermine the government's ability to prosecute the defendant.

When an officer fails to give such warnings under the circumstances described by Mr. Stone and Mr. Torrey, any responses the defendant gives to her questions will not be admissible in court. This result is not a punishment of the officer; it is simply a safeguard to give officers an incentive to behave properly.

Some individual police departments may have rules requiring their officers to give Miranda warnings under the appropriate circumstances, but the cynic in me believes at least as many departments informally encourage their officers not to do so.